


To Take Advantage

by Haicrescendo



Series: What We’re Given [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon has been taken out back and shot, Gen, Zuko is doing his best, as written by zuko, coincidentally min is also doing his best, even lost I’ll throw hands, hand waving canon because fuck it, not the sexy business, reasons to not do crime: zuko will definitely steal your ostrich horse, song gives Zuko the business, the ‘hey you’re being pretty judgey and should probably stop that’ business, they’re handling it very differently, this is a fuckboy psa, zukoichi the traveling masseuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haicrescendo/pseuds/Haicrescendo
Summary: [Zuko doesn’t tell Uncle goodbye.He doesn’t think that he would try and stop him, but Zuko thinks that if he has to talk about it, he’ll manage to talk himself out of it. Better to go now before he can change his mind.Zuko packs light: a change of clothes, some nonperishables, and a few knives go into a wax-lined satchel. He’s about to leave the room when he stops to eye the swords mounted on his wall, and, well.It’s not like he can go around firebending all over the place, he reasons, and straps them to his back.]Or,Zuko’s super fun, solo adventure in the Earth Kingdom.
Series: What We’re Given [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537510
Comments: 262
Kudos: 4949
Collections: Quality ATLA





	To Take Advantage

**Author's Note:**

> Y’ALL THOUGHT I WAS NEVER GONNA UPDATE THIS, DIDN’T YOU?
> 
> Well the joke’s on you because here it fucking is. If you read this and enjoy it, please leave the author a comment. Feedback is love. Feedback is life. 
> 
> If you’d rather scream at me on tumblr instead, I can be found @sword-and-stars.

* * *

  
Zuko doesn’t tell Uncle goodbye.

He doesn’t think that he would try and stop him, but Zuko thinks that if he has to talk about it, he’ll manage to talk himself out of it. Better to go now before he can change his mind.

Zuko packs light: a change of clothes, some nonperishables, and a few knives go into a wax-lined satchel. He’s about to leave the room when he stops to eye the swords mounted on his wall, and, well.

It’s not like he can go around firebending all over the place, he reasons, and straps them to his back.

They’re not far off the coast of the island. It’ll take a bit, but Zuko can definitely row there. He’s done it before, from way farther away, and when he sinks the spare rowboat into the sea with a quiet splash, he doesn’t look back towards the Jasmine Dragon. 

It’s hard enough to leave, Zuko thinks.

No need to make it harder.

* * *

“Excuse me, sir, but _what the fuck_.”

Zuko opens his eyes and blinks dazedly upwards into Min’s concerned, exasperated face.

“I wanted to visit?”

Min’s russet eyes narrow in disbelief. Zuko sighs, still heaving out hard breaths. Just because he’s managed a longer row doesn’t mean that it’s not still exhausting.

“Please don’t ask too many questions. Plausible deniability.”

“...Right,” the man says and offers Zuko a hand up off the sand. Zuko takes it. “And would your need for plausible deniability have anything to do with why you’re here and the Dragon isn’t?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

Min stares him down for a good ten seconds, shifts his look to the bag and swords attached to Zuko’s back. Finally, he sighs and takes a step back, settling into loose parade rest.

“Sir. Whatever you need that we can give, _you have it._ ” Zuko sags a little where he stands, just a little, so relieved he wants to drop to the ground. He does not do that. “You only have to ask.”

“I’m going to need a few minutes to myself, and then we’re going to see how well Mochi can fly.”

-

Prince Zuko is hiding it well but anyone with eyes can tell that he’s on the verge of flying completely off the handle. The kid losing his temper and hollering about anything that gets him going is nothing new, but there’s something way different about this. He’s a vibrating mess of energy but _calm_. 

Resolute.

Like he knows he’s making a terrible decision but is sticking to it anyway.

A rock drops down into Min’s stomach as he follows Zuko into the barn, watches him make a beeline towards Omurice and Katsudon sleeping together in a little cream and brown pile and bury his face in their fur.

Min can hear his quietly raggedy breaths as he wakes Mochi. She makes a low rumble and stretches, nudging Min’s cheek.

“Is this going to get me in trouble with the General?” Min asks quietly when Zuko comes back up. The boy’s eyes are a little red but he looks more settled.

“Not if you don’t rat me out.”

Min glares reproachfully.

“ _Sir.”_

Zuko sighs and buries his hands in the fur around Mochi’s ears, right where she loves to be rubbed.

“Just tell Uncle you didn’t know. Tell him, I don’t know, that I snuck in and you didn’t know. Tell him that I made you.”

Min will, under no circumstances, be lying to the general if he asks. But he also knows that trying to stop Zuko when he’s made up his mind is pointless. Teruko’s complained more than once that trying to get through his stubbornness is like talking to a wall, as if she’s got any room in the world to talk. Like she doesn’t just talk the talk but walk that exact same, horrifically stubborn walk.

“Just tell me one thing...is this important?”

“It’s really, really important.” 

It can be easy to forget sometimes that Prince Zuko is just a kid but when he looks that earnest, it’s impossible not to know. 

“I trust your judgement, sir. You have from me whatever you need.”

* * *

Flying is _so_ much faster than rowing.

Flying is faster even than the Jasmine Dragon’s comfortable little putter, for all that she used to be a warship and still has the insides to prove it. Zuko definitely does not laugh at Min’s white knuckled grip around his waist and he can’t help enjoying the sensation of flight, precarious as it is. If he lives through this and Uncle ever forgives him after, they should definitely look at the design of Appa’s saddle. This works, but it’s scary as hell.

The coastline of the Earth Kingdom shows up faster than Zuko would like.

He wishes that his flight had been just a little bit slower.

“Thank you, Min,” he says lowly once Mochi’s feet hit the sand. “I’ve got it from here.”

“Sir...are you sure? If you needed me—“

“No!” Zuko forcibly gentles his tone. “No. I need you on the island making sure that everything goes the way it should.” Out of every member of his crew, Zuko himself has always been the most disposable. He knows this. “I can’t do this unless I know that—that they’re okay, and I need you there for that.”

He’s always known it.

“Besides,” he continues, “It’s not going to be safe. I need to be covert and inconspicuous, and the Avatar does a crappy enough job covering up his tracks.”

Maybe if Aang did a better job, Zuko wouldn’t be taking up a borderline suicide mission to save him from Azula.

“Take Mochi back to the island and if— _when_ my Uncle asks, tell him whatever you want. He’ll know that this is all on me.”

For a moment it looks like Min’s going to protest, but in the end, he doesn’t. In the end he bows deeply, hands shaping a flame.

Zuko bows back to him.

“Good luck, sir,” Min says formally, like every word hurts. “If you need anything, just ask. _Please ask_.”

Zuko watches, silent, as the man clambers back up onto Mochi. The bison rumbles at him, as if confused about why he’s not going back with them, and then eventually listens to Min on her back, lifts up off the ground, and starts flying away.

Zuko scrubs hard at his eyes and watches the sky until he can’t see them anymore.

No time for _feelings_ ; he’s got work to do.

* * *

Here’s what Zuko’s always known but never _really_ appreciated until now: the Earth Kingdom is _huge_.

Oh, there are plenty of cities and plenty of towns and villages but that’s dwarfed in comparison to the massive stretches of land that’s just forests and meadows and fields. Zuko’s spent most of his life feeling alone but very rarely has he truly been alone. It’s weird, and lonely, and he doesn’t necessarily hate it, but it’s not ideal.

He wishes, just for a moment before mercilessly squashing it down, that he’d asked Uncle to come with him.

Iroh would have, Zuko knows. He’d protest but in the end he’d follow him anywhere, and that’s why Zuko couldn’t tell him. He can’t ask that of him when there’s a tiny, poisonous voice in the back of his head constantly whispering that he won’t survive this.

If Zuko’s going to die, he’s at least going to make sure that Uncle doesn’t see it.

It doesn’t hurt, right now, that Uncle Iroh considers him his second son, but Zuko will at least do him the mercy of not having to watch a second one die if he can help it.

The sun is hot, and Zuko’s hungry, and also out of money.

This is a problem.

He’s on a road, at least, which beats brush and thickets, and he can see the outline of a city on the horizon, but that city’s not going to do much good if he can’t afford anything in it. It’s not a busy road but it’s active enough, and Zuko eventually sits himself down at the shoulder to think about his next move. There’s always hunting and fishing and foraging but those take time he doesn’t want to waste.

The issue, of course, is that Zuko doesn’t have any marketable skills that could be even remotely helpful right now, even if he wasn’t neck deep in Earth Kingdom and determined to keep being a firebender to himself. For a moment or two, Zuko sits quietly and rubs his temples, wills an idea— _any idea_ , he’s not even limiting himself to _good_ ideas at this point, to come to him. 

In the end it’s not an idea that comes to him but an opportunity, by random chance.

While Zuko’s sitting on his behind, a man pulling a cart behind him stops at the opposite shoulder. He’s dressed serviceably but well, and his cart’s piled high with goods. Zuko considers, briefly, the merits of a stick-‘em-up, but broad daylight is neither the right time for such a thing or something someone does if they’re trying to be covert.

Thanks, Teruko.

The merchant hunches over and rubs at his shoulders, and Zuko’s up and moving before he realizes quite what he’s doing.

Uncle has a lot of weird talents and for some reason he’s bound and determined to make sure that Zuko is at least somewhat proficient at all of them. For better or for worse, in his personal experiences, but hopefully this time for better.

“Excuse me,” Zuko says, forces his face to do the thing he does with new customers so that they’re not instantly put off by the scar, “I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be in pain.”

“That’s one way to put it,” the man grumbles. “Don’t know why I bother paying my chiropractor. Word of advice, kid—if you’re gonna pay someone to hurt you, make sure you get your money’s worth.”

Zuko shelves that particular remark as advice for another day and holds out a hand, wiggles his fingers a little.

“I’d be happy to take a look, if you’d like.” Happy is a stretch and a lie, but Zuko will be happy to take his coin off his hands. “I’m sure that I cost less than a chiropractor.” Fewer credentials than a chiropractor, too, but nobody Uncle had him practice on had ever complained. Much, anyway, and _much_ less often after he got some practice in.

“Why the hell not?” The merchant shrugs and sets down his packs, settling down onto a large rock. “If you can help even a little bit, I’ll pay you well.”

Those are the magic words, and Zuko cracks his knuckles.

The trick to this, Uncle told him the first time he’d say Zuko down to try it, is to put just enough heat into the hands for warmth, not flame. Just a few degrees higher than normal human body temperature is perfect for knots and sore muscles and, coincidentally, for working with bread.

(Chef Bon, when he found this out, was so thrilled with this knowledge that he could have cried. Instead, practical man that he was without bending prowess of his own, he instead harassed Zuko into kitchen lessons too and resigned himself to fighting with Teruko every few days over him. 

Are they royal skills?

Absolutely not.

Are they useful?

Absolutely yes.)

When done correctly, and he _knows_ he can do this correctly, Zuko’s hands are just warm enough to be comforting and far too cool even for heat haze. He rubs them together for show and then proceeds to go about working the knots of tension out of the man’s back and shoulders.

“Quit pulling with your back,” Zuko scolds despite his own determination to keep his mouth shut, “Or no chiropractor in the world will be able to help you. I’m not qualified to adjust you but this should, hopefully, get you to where you’re going without too much trouble.”

The merchant lets out a borderline incoherent groan of assent and rolls his neck underneath Zuko’s fingers working warmth into his bones.

“Shit, kid. They should draft you into medical work for the army—they’d kill to have you.”

Literally, if they knew who he really was, Zuko thinks, and doesn’t reply. Let the man think it’s because he’s humble. He doesn’t need to know.

He doesn’t name a particular amount for his trouble so the merchant ends up simply tossing a pouch his way, but when he’s alone to count the coins he’s been given, Zuko’s sure that he’s been overpaid. He wasn’t expecting much more than enough to cover a few meals, but he’s positive that this is more than warranted. Well, he’d be stupid to complain about it, he decides.

The longer he can make his funds last, the longer it’ll have to be before he inevitably has to do it again.

And, with the way Aang’s trail has zigged and zagged with little rhyme or reason, it’ll definitely be happening again.

It’s not an awful way to make a temporary living but, as clinical as Zuko’s capable of making it, the idea of putting his hands all over strangers makes something in his guts twist with discomfort. It’s one thing for the old ladies who come to the Dragon for morning tea and a newspaper to pat his hands when he brings their orders, or for the loud, bearded sailors to clap him on the shoulder in thanks or approval, and quite another to do what he just did. The Jasmine Dragon is home and Zuko knows, at the deepest part of his insides, that he’s safe there.

He doesn’t like touching strangers. 

Zuko does what he has to, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever like it.

The closest village is small and a little ramshackle, and Zuko realizes with a sinking feeling that there’s almost definitely not any sort of inn or lodgings for travelers to be found. Which is a disappointment, because he’d already mentally spent his funds on a room and had been hoping for something like a bed, even if anything fancy was out of the question.

A stick of grilled pig-chicken sweetens his mood but the sounds of a scuffle and noisy protest sour it right back up.

Zuko tells himself, firmly, to mind his own damned business.

* * *

Zuko does not, in the end, mind his own damned business.

Crowded into the space between two homes, Zuko can see the backs of several full grown men looming over someone. A loud, frightened someone if her shrieking is to be believed and he hurries over. Zuko’s not exactly sure what he’s going to do, but he knows that he can’t let it stand.

He reaches out and taps one of the men on the shoulder.

“Excuse me.”

“What the fuck do you want? Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something—“

_In the middle of something_ is apparently harassing a young woman in a white hanbok that looks grabbed at in several places and smudged with dirt, who looks simultaneously frightened and furious. She clutches a black bag to her chest. Zuko makes up his mind.

Okay, then.

Zuko doesn’t let the guy finish his sentence before his fist is slamming into his jaw without warning. The guy drops with the single hit and his friends turn, startled at being interrupted.

Zuko glares and keeps his hands up, makes sure to show off his knuckles that are likely going to bruise.

“Who’s next?” He asks, taking a step forward.

They’re big but that doesn’t matter. Zuko’s fought with plenty of people who were bigger than him.

Just because they’re bigger doesn’t mean they’re stronger.

Zuko knows this intimately, but they don’t because they turn away from the girl and focus on him instead.

“You little—“

In the Fire Nation, everyone learns to fight. Benders, non-benders, every citizen knows some way to defend themselves, and even the tiniest children have teeth. The Earth Kingdom should learn from that example, Zuko thinks, because it’s too easy to slide into stance, root himself, and let them knock themselves out on his hands.

He doesn’t even have to _try._

Zuko only kicks them a little bit as he steps over their bodies and approaches the young woman. She raises her bag on his approach and Zuko puts his hands up.

“Whoa! I’m not gonna hurt you,” he tells her with a healthy amount of reproach. “Are you okay?”

She’s _staring_.

She’s staring _at his face_.

Zuko fights the urge to turn away so that she might not see, and meets her eyes. Most people see the gargantuan blemish on his face and either pretend, _badly_ , that it’s not there, or it’s pity. Both feel awful.

She doesn’t look at him like she pities him, nor is she looking away.

“I’m—I’m okay,” she says finally. “Thank you for your help.”

“It was nothing,” Zuko says and turns to go, only to have his sleeve grabbed on a tight grip. He turns back.

“Can...if you don’t mind, can I ask you for one more favor? Please?”

* * *

The girl’s name is Song, and she asks Zuko to walk her to work.

He obliges because he’s not a dickhead, but the fact that she’s afraid to walk by herself is both sobering and enraging. If Teruko were here, she’d drag that girl out back, teach her how to throw a punch, and then shove a knife into her hands. But Teruko’s not here, so Zuko (despite his determination to be inconspicuous and _mind his own business)_ says the words he knows she’d say and rants the entire way about how ridiculous and stupid it is that people in the Earth Kingdom don’t want girls to fight.

It’s not like it’s a _surprise_ to him or anything. Most of the Jasmine Dragon’s business goes to Earth folks, and Zuko’s not stupid. But it’s one thing to know something and another entirely to have it pounded into one’s head by experience.

He doesn’t know this girl but he knows that if he hadn’t shown up, she would have had to rely on somebody else for help, and who even knows of help would have come? So Zuko grumbles the entire way, despite that he’s supposed to be passing himself off as a random Earth Kingdom citizen. Despite his appreciation for theatre, he is not doing a great job.

Song works at the hospital.

Zuko’s not surprised—she’s been more tolerant of his griping than she had any right to be. He _is_ surprised by being dragged into the hospital by the sleeve, sat down in a chair, and ordered to allow her to treat his busted up knuckles. He complains about it and does not win that battle. They do look pretty bad, Zuko thinks as he stares at them, waiting for Song to gather her supplies, though they look way worse than they feel.

He didn’t even really do all that much but the skin on his hands is already starting to go angry red and purple, which is pretty much the only reason that Zuko hasn’t gone out the window yet. He’s not here to be _sociable_ , he’s here to find Aang and keep him from dying.

Though it’s clear that Aang isn’t here. Likely, if Zuko’s intel is correct, the Avatar and his friends are on route to Ba Sing Se. It's the only major city left to go and it’s only a couple of days’ journey from here.

The familiar little pill of panic drops back into Zuko’s stomach and begins to fizz.

Everywhere Zuko goes, he’s _too late_.

_Oh, you just missed them_ is what he’s heard over and over over the last month and if he hears it again, he’s going to lose his mind. No matter how Zuko hurries or how well he tracks, he’s always a step behind.

When’s he going to be too late, for real?

At what point has he finally failed?

Zuko drops his face into his hands and sighs hard into his palms, forcing his breaths into a deep, even calm. A panicked firebender is dangerous to everyone around them. Uncle’s voice echoes in his head. If Zuko can’t control his heart then he has to control his breath instead.

“Thank you for waiting.”

Song returns with a little basket in her hands, and Zuko allows her to apply a healing ointment that stings worse than a bite from a spider-viper and then wrap his hands in bandages. She’s good at her job, quick and straightforward and firm, and Zuko tolerates being treated better than he thought he would.

“Why were those men bothering you earlier?” It finally occurs for Zuko to ask when she’s done.

Song shakes her head.

“They just want to feed their egos,” she tells him, “Did a round in the army and came back to talk about it, so they’ve been feeling real big. _Cute little nurse, look at my big war scars_ , that sort of thing.”

Zuko makes a face.

That wouldn’t be tolerated at home—in the Fire Nation. Mostly because a cute little _Fire Nation_ nurse would probably, definitely be carrying around a big knife to wave at them. Or a smaller knife. Or maybe just a very sharp hair accessory. Whatever would get the job done.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Zuko asks.

Song frowns at him.

“Like I’m defenseless.”

“Aren’t you?” Flies out of his mouth before he can stop it.

“I’m a _medic_ ,” Song tells him, voice suddenly hard. “We’re in the middle of a war. You think that _that_ wouldn’t protect me? Not everyone knows how to help people, but I do. Is violence the only thing that _you_ know how to do? Are you just that same kind of meathead?”

Shook, Zuko is silent.

“I...sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

“At least you know it.” Zuko wilts a little under her scowl and after a few seconds, when she thinks he’s had enough, Song softens. “I was rude too. It’s easy, when you’ve been hurt the way we have.”

Zuko blinks at her in confusion, and Song abruptly hikes up the bottom of her hanbok. Vivid burn scars rope their way up her leg, and Zuko feels like he’s going to be sick. They’re pale enough to be years old by now, and Song is not that much older than he is.

Zuko suddenly regrets eating that stick of yakiniku.

“Come by for dinner tonight,” Song says and covers her leg back up. “As a thank you. My mother has a good way with roast duck.”

Zuko will definitely _not_ be sticking around long enough to have dinner.

* * *

  
  


Zuko _does_ stick around to have dinner, because he’s a sucker.

It’s mostly by accident, because he intends literally to make sure that Song gets home without incident and then be on his way. He doesn’t even mean for her to see him but in the twenty seconds that he drops his guard of paranoia, she catches sight of him, and then he’s done for.

Zuko doesn’t know what to do with this sort of easy kindness.

Song isn’t family, she’s not his crew, she’s not even his _people._ Zuko is suspicious to the point that she should take one look at him and go in the opposite direction but she keeps throwing aggressive goodwill at him instead, and in the end all he can do is accept it. These are war times and nobody in town has a whole lot to go around. Nobody could blame her for being less than generous.

Zuko certainly wouldn't.

That knowledge, in the end, is why he allows himself to be tugged into Song’s home and introduced to her mother, and why he accepts her thanks and the small mountain of rice and roasted duck she pushes into his hands.

It takes a strength to be kind when the world is not. 

Zuko misses Uncle so hard and so suddenly that he wants to cry.

He does not.

Instead he lets himself pretend, just for a little bit, that he’s not the dangerous intruder that he is, and lets himself tell little half truths that aren’t quite lies. He lets himself pretend, just for the length of a meal, that he belongs here.

Zuko doesn’t, though.

He may not have a country, but he does still have a home, even if it feels too far away to be real. Zuko lets himself, for the first time since he left, take comfort in that.

“I have to go,” he says finally, after he’s dried the last dish. 

“You...you don’t have to, you know,” Song says quietly from the table. “You don’t have to go.”

But Zuko does, and they both know it.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” is all he can say, bows low at the waist in the doorway. “Please take care.”

“Do you—would you like to borrow our ostrich horse? If you’re in a hurry, she’ll get you there faster.”

Zuko shakes his head.

“No, thank you,” he says softly and means it. “I think I’ve got it covered.” He bows again and it’s harder, this time, to keep his hands from shaping the traditional flame. 

And then Zuko turns and walks away. He doesn’t look back but he knows that Song stays in the doorway and watches until he’s gone. He knows this because the minute he’s out of sight he’s up a tree and doesn’t come down until the door shuts.

He does have a plan.

It’s a pretty crappy plan, and definitely doesn’t follow the letter of the law, but Zuko can think of a few people who definitely deserve to get robbed tonight.

* * *

Song was right, Zuko thinks from atop the piebald ostrich horse that he’d liberated.

It wasn’t difficult to find out the names of the men who’d made the bad decision to harass too-kind doctors on their way to work, and it was easier still to find out where they lived.

Even easier than that had been slipping into their homes and taking every chopstick, bar of soap, and pair of pants that they owned.

And of course, the easiest thing of all had been tacking up the ostrich horse in the barn and leading him out of the barn, down the road, and away.

The Avatar’s trail was going to Ba Sing Se, and that’s where Zuko would follow.

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
